Our Table Cookbook {Review and Giveaway}

In Our Table, food stylist and recipe columnist Renee Muller shares her simple and delicious kosher family recipes. Each recipe calls for everyday ingredients, all easily accessible, and is accompanied by full color photos. Both of those components as well as the easy to follow directions and tips make this cookbook perfect for a beginner in the kitchen as well as a great resource for the seasoned chef. The cookbook is not only for the kitchen, it makes a stunning coffee table book. Renee brings her expert food styling skills to each and every photo. This is something I really look for in a great cookbook. I love looking at beautiful food and love seeing what the recipe will look like.

The book is filled with recipe tips, suggestions, and techniques to help in the kitchen. Some of the recipes also include links to online video tutorials. As Renee was writing she wished she could be there with her readers in the kitchen. “Many times while writing down recipe instructions, I wished I could just invite my readers to join me in my kitchen and cook with me. That thought led me to create a variety of videos of some of the recipes so you can view them as you want and see some of the techniques I use when cooking my recipes.” I love this idea, it’s like getting personal cooking classes with Renee Muller!

The categories in the cookbook include Appetizers, Soups & Salads, Fish & Dairy, Meat, Chicken & More, Snacks & Sides, Bread, Cakes & Cookies, and Desserts. Each recipe is labeled as Meat, Dairy, or Pareve as well as Freezer Friendly or Gluten Free. There is even a Pesach (Passover) guide with substitutions so many recipes can be used over the holiday as well.

At our house, Rosh Hashanah cannot happen without honey muffins. At least, that’s the way my kids see it. It’s a family project, and by now, a family tradition, too. This recipe was given to me by a relative in Israel who bakes them all the time and claims that no matter how many batches she bakes, there are never enough. She’s absolutely right. We once baked a quadruple batch of these (sans the apples) for a bake sale on our block and we were left without a crumb!

Ingredients

For The Apples

2 Tablespoons butter OR margarine

4 Granny Smith apples, diced

4 Tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

For the muffins

2 cups prepared tea, lukewarm

2 cups sugar

2 cups oil

2 cups honey

12 eggs

6 cups flour

2 Tablespoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 heaping Tablespoons cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.

Prepare the apples: In a saucepan, melt butter over a medium-low flame. Add apples, sugar, and cinnamon; cook until apples are fragrant and soften a bit, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Fill each muffin cup halfway with batter. (I like to use a cupcake pen for this; I find it very helpful.) Top with a teaspoon of prepared apples. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out almost dry with some moist crumbs attached.

note: The apples are optional; I find that some children prefer the muffins plain. We add the apple for Rosh Hashanah (very loudly singing, “Dip the apple in the hooooneeeyy” as we do so) but throughout the year, we bake them plain.

tip: I recently discovered an amazing gadget called “The Cupcake (or Muffin) Pen.” It really removes the whole messy aspect of filling cupcake pans with batter. Look for it in specialty equipment stores.

3.5.3208

Want to win your own copy? Artscroll has graciously offered to give one copy of Our Table to one of you! Head over to my Instagram @lilmisscakes and enter for a chance to win! US mailing addresses only-sorry!